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As The Tallis Scholars processed onto the Cadogan Hall platform, for the opening concert of this season’s Choral at Cadogan series, there were some unfamiliar faces among its ten members - or faces familiar but more usually seen in other contexts.

As a prelude to the 2017-18 season Lyric Opera of Chicago presented its annual concert, Stars of Lyric Opera at Millennium Park, during the last weekend. A number of those who performed in this event will be featured in roles during the coming season.

Back in the LP days, if a singer wanted to show some sophistication, s/he
sometimes put out an album of songs by famous composers set to the poems of one
poet: for example, Phyllis Curtin’s much-admired 1964 disc of Debussy and Fauré
songs to poems by Verlaine, with pianist Ryan Edwards (available now as a CD
from VAI).

Watching David McVicar’s 2003 production of Die Zauberflöte at the Royal Opera House - its sixth revival - for the third time, I was struck by how discerningly John MacFarlane’s sumptuous designs, further enhanced by Paule Constable’s superbly evocative lighting, communicate the dense and rich symbolism of Mozart’s Singspiel.

On September 10, 2017, Pacific Opera Project (POP) presented Gaetano Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor in a beautiful outdoor setting at Forest Lawn. POP audiences enjoy casual seating with wine, water, and finger foods at each table. General and Artistic Director Josh Shaw greeted patrons in a “blood stained” white wedding suit. Since Lucia is a Scottish opera, it opened with an elegant bagpipe solo calling members of the audience to their seats.

Blazing Berlioz' The Damnation of Faust at the Barbican with Sir Simon Rattle, Bryan Hymel, Christopher Purves, Karen Cargill, Gabor Bretz, The London Symphony Orchestra and The London Symphony Chorus directed by Simon Halsey, Rattle's chorus master of choice for nearly 35 years. Towards the end, the Tiffin Boys' Choir, the Tiffin Girls' Choir and Tiffin Children's Choir (choirmaster James Day) filed into the darkened auditorium to sing The Apotheosis of Marguerite, their voices pure and angelic, their faces shining. An astonishingly theatrical touch, but absolutely right.

Three years into their MOZART 250 project, Classical Opera have launched a new venture, The Mozartists, which is designed to allow the company to broaden its exploration of the concert and symphonic works of Mozart and his contemporaries.

In her 200th anniversary year, in the county of her birth and in which she spent much of her life, and two days after she became the first female writer to feature on a banknote - the new polymer £10 note - Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park made a timely appearance, in operatic form, at The Grange in Hampshire.

Among the myriad of artistic innovation during the Kurt Herbert Adler era at San Francisco Opera was the expansion of the War Memorial Opera House pit. Thus there could be 100 players in the pit for this current edition of Strauss’ beloved opera, Elektra!

I have to confess, somewhat sheepishly, at the start of my conversation with Mark Padmore, that I had not previously been aware of the annual music festival held in the small Cotswolds town of Tetbury, which was founded in 2002 and to which Padmore will return later this month to perform a recital of lieder by Schubert and Schumann with pianist Till Fellner.

Mega famous L.A. artist David Hockney is no stranger at San Francisco Opera. Of his six designs for opera only the Met’s Parade and Covent Garden’s Die Frau ohne Schatten have not found their way onto the War Memorial stage.

In addition to fond memories of previous beguiling productions, I had two specific reasons for eagerly anticipating this annual visit by Bampton Classical Opera to St John’s Smith Square. First, it offered the chance to enjoy again the tunefulness and wit of Salieri’s dramma giocoso, La scuola de’ gelosi (The School of Jealousy), which I’d seen the company perform so stylishly at Bampton in July.

There was a decided nip in the air as I made my way to the opening night of the Royal Opera House’s 2017/18 season, eagerly anticipating the House’s first new production of La bohème for over forty years. But, inside the theatre in took just a few moments of magic for director Richard Jones and his designer, Stewart Laing, to convince me that I had left autumnal London far behind.

The Bavarian-born Johann Simon Mayr (1763–1845) trained and made his career
in Italy and thus ended up calling himself Giovanni Simone Mayr, or simply
G. S. Mayr. He is best known for having been composition teacher to
Giuseppe Donizetti.

It must be a Director’s nightmare. After all the months of planning, co-ordinating and facilitating, you are approaching the opening night of a new concert season, at which one of the world’s leading baritones is due to perform, accompanied by a pianist who is one of the world’s leading chamber musicians. And, then, appendicitis strikes. You have 24 hours to find a replacement vocal soloist or else the expectant patrons will be disappointed.

For the Toronto company, the sole endeavor in North America devoted exclusively to the authentic staging of early opera, is in itself both remarkable and admirable.
OA’s founding director Marshall Pynkoski and choreographer Jeannette Lajeunmesse Zingg leave no scholarly stone unturned in their effort to create productions that take their audience back to the time of the composer. And in so doing they do not merely create a physical replica of a historic staging; their success lies rather in their ability to lay bare the intense emotional involvements that once made Poppea a blockbuster of the Italian Baroque.

The Poppea on stage in Toronto’s handsomely restored 1913 Elgin Theatre began as a co-production with Houston Grand Opera and was first on stage here in 2002. In the intervening years the production has lost none of its glittering beauty, and its star — Michael Maniaci as Nerone — has grown even more impressive in his artistry since then. Now just into his 30s, Maniaci is a unique phenomenon in a world now overrun by talented countertenors.

By his own definition Maniaci is a male soprano whose larynx failed to develop, leaving him with a high voice that is totally natural. He was spared the agony of his voice breaking and thus must resort to falsetto in his work. That’s the technical side of things.

Maniaci is now in demand everywhere, and the voice continues to overwhelm with its strength and dramatic power. As Nero(ne), who in the final B.C. century allegedly played his violin while Rome burned, Maniaci has a lot of fiddling to do in the melodramatic entanglements in Poppea and in the final performance of the season seen on May 2, he was equally excellent as the demonic politician and as the gentle lover. His most tender moment, however, came not in an exchange with ambitious Poppea, but rather with “hands-on” relief provided by a servant as he lay on his bed.
Happily, Maniaci has his vocal and dramatic equal in the passionately obsessed Poppea of soprano Peggy Kriha Dye, a leading figure in opera houses since she created the role of Stella in Andre’ Previn’s Streetcar Named Desire at the San Francisco Opera.

European João Fernandes brought both dignity and majesty to Seneca, in this story not merely the noblest Roman of them all, but the only the only unsoiled character in the entire drama. A hush settled upon the audience at the conclusion of his death scene, which appropriately ended the first half of the performance.

Beyond these leads men in the cast largely outsang the women involved. As Ottone, Poppea’s rejected husband who in newly-found love for Drusilla plots to murder his ex-wife, bass baritone Olivier Laquerre was a commanding and convincing figure, while Carla Huhtanen was a sweetly adequate, but in no way overwhelming Drusilla. Kimberly Barber sympathetically portrayed Ottavia, Nerone’s rejected wife and thus the great loser in the story.

Compared to the concept of the role in other productions Vicki St. Pierre took a largely straight-forward approach to Ottavia’s nurse, who then lowers herself to the general level of indecency prevalent in the story to jock up her heels — literally — at the thought of the greater glory that she will henceforth enjoy as Poppea’s servant. The nurse is more commonly sung by a man who makes this a comic role — as in a recent Houston Poppea imported from Bologna where she took cues from TV’s Aunt Emma.

Distinction is brought to OA productions by Toronto’s Tafelmusik Baroque Orchestra, conducted for Poppea by OA resident music director David Fall is. And eight members of the Atelier added both to the beauty of the staging and its dramatic continuity.

All the above, however, are factors that contribute to a success far greater than the mere sum of these many parts of this production. For it is the total impact of this Poppea that makes it overwhelmingly moving music theater.

Elders recall the infancy of the early music movement when emphasis was upon scholarship and respect for history. Performances were impressive — but anemic. Here, on the other hand, is opera as full blooded and vital as anything that Verdi and Wagner were later to write. The company has no fear either of emotion or the searing sensuality often present in Monteverdi’s score. It’s what makes Opera Atelier the winner that it is.

Sets and costumes true to the period were by — respectively — Gerard Gauci and Dora Rust d’Eye. The staging was effectively lighted by Kevin Fraser.
In its next season Opera Atelier stages Gluck’s Iphigénie en Tauride and Mozart’s Marriage of Figaro. Call 416-703-3767 or visit www.operaatelier.com.